[rcu,5/5] doc: Clarify historical disclaimers in memory-barriers.txt
Commit Message
From: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@kernel.org>
This commit makes it clear that the reason that these sections are
historical is that smp_read_barrier_depends() is no more. It also
removes the point about comparison operations, given that there are
other optimizations that can break address dependencies.
Suggested-by: Jonas Oberhauser <jonas.oberhauser@huaweicloud.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>
Cc: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
Cc: Andrea Parri <parri.andrea@gmail.com>
Cc: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com>
Cc: Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com>
Cc: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Cc: Jade Alglave <j.alglave@ucl.ac.uk>
Cc: Luc Maranget <luc.maranget@inria.fr>
Cc: Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@gmail.com>
Cc: Daniel Lustig <dlustig@nvidia.com>
Cc: Joel Fernandes <joel@joelfernandes.org>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: <linux-arch@vger.kernel.org>
Cc: <linux-doc@vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Neeraj Upadhyay (AMD) <neeraj.iitr10@gmail.com>
---
Documentation/memory-barriers.txt | 17 ++++++++++-------
1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)
@@ -396,10 +396,11 @@ Memory barriers come in four basic varieties:
(2) Address-dependency barriers (historical).
- [!] This section is marked as HISTORICAL: For more up-to-date
- information, including how compiler transformations related to pointer
- comparisons can sometimes cause problems, see
- Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst.
+ [!] This section is marked as HISTORICAL: it covers the long-obsolete
+ smp_read_barrier_depends() macro, the semantics of which are now
+ implicit in all marked accesses. For more up-to-date information,
+ including how compiler transformations can sometimes break address
+ dependencies, see Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst.
An address-dependency barrier is a weaker form of read barrier. In the
case where two loads are performed such that the second depends on the
@@ -560,9 +561,11 @@ There are certain things that the Linux kernel memory barriers do not guarantee:
ADDRESS-DEPENDENCY BARRIERS (HISTORICAL)
----------------------------------------
-[!] This section is marked as HISTORICAL: For more up-to-date information,
-including how compiler transformations related to pointer comparisons can
-sometimes cause problems, see Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst.
+[!] This section is marked as HISTORICAL: it covers the long-obsolete
+smp_read_barrier_depends() macro, the semantics of which are now implicit
+in all marked accesses. For more up-to-date information, including
+how compiler transformations can sometimes break address dependencies,
+see Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst.
As of v4.15 of the Linux kernel, an smp_mb() was added to READ_ONCE() for
DEC Alpha, which means that about the only people who need to pay attention